


Rise On Water

by SomeEnchantedEve



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 07:47:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeEnchantedEve/pseuds/SomeEnchantedEve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the GameofShips Golden Ships Challenge - an AU based on the Brother Grimms fairy tale '<a href="http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/grimm/bl-grimm-littlebrother.htm">Brother and Sister.'</a> </p><p>A tale of the turning wheel of fortune - a golden maid, a fierce knight, a broken mirror, and a bitter queen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rise On Water

**Author's Note:**

> This fairy tale just popped out at me as ESPECIALLY Jaime/Cersei, and I really enjoyed getting to tie the elements of the fairy tale into several elements of canon. I hope that you enjoy! As always, thoughts/comments/kudos are greatly appreciated.

They love to lie in perfect mimic upon Cersei’s bed as the dawn pours through the open windows. Every morning, the rising sun spills over the windowsill and illuminates golden hair, white limbs, knees tucked into knees, thighs pressed to thighs, and fingers laced together. That is how she awakens each morn – slowly, sweetly, with the soothing tempo of Jaime’s heart beating against her back, in tempo to her own, and the rush of his breath over the whorl of her ear as he whispers, “Are you happy? Are you happy, sweet sister?” 

She does not bother to open her eyes, and her lips curl into a smile. For in those moments, it is impossible to be anything other than happy, wrapped in the solid arms of her other half, cocooned in their completeness. Each day dawns bright and crisp with the smell of the salt breeze wafting through her chambers, and she is young and beautiful and destined for greatness. She is a golden lion, the jewel of the Rock, and she shall have a silver prince as her reward for being born beneath a blessed star. There is no reason in the world, in those heady days of youth, for her to be unhappy. “Oh, yes,” she whispers, and he sighs in response. 

He does not have to speak for Cersei to know that he would never _wish_ her to answer differently, that her joy is the lifeblood of his own. Yet he cannot be quite satisfied with this quiet interim; for her sleepy contentment, Jaime is always awash in restlessness, and that is their constant push and pull. There is a desire for honors and accolades, for adoration and power that is at the center of them both, that Cersei thinks must be their shared heart. And yet Jaime’s manifests in a more visceral way – he longs for battles and bruises, for bathes of blood and clashes of steel, whereas Cersei’s dreams are more glittering and grand – a silver crown, a red cloak, a throne of her own at last, _at last._

And one by one, they are snatched from her before they are even her own – her dragon prince is wed to a Dornish princess and her father, in a black rage, prepares to sweep them from the fine pageantry of court life, back to those lazy mornings in Casterly Rock that suddenly do not seem as sweet and satisfying as she remembered. Perhaps that is due to the greatest indignity of all - that her twin, her mirrored half, is not to accompany them, for he has traded his inheritance for a white cloak and the promise of being by her side; in this, the world has treated both of them treacherously. 

She had dreamed of her silver prince as her husband and her golden twin as her back and shield; she had thought to adorn herself with their beauty. Denial happens so rarely in her life, and much as the time her father told her she may not have a sword to match Jaime’s, she weeps bitterly at the loss of what should be hers and curses her woman’s weakness in crying, all at once. 

Her heartbreak makes her pliable, and with his sweet words and persuasive kisses, Jaime has always been able to bend her to her will. He so rarely leads, preferring to let her decide for them both, and so when he does try to steer them, more often than not she finds herself relenting. This is such a time, when he clasps her hands between both of his and whispers, “We will find no happiness apart, Cersei. If we took a ship from White Harbor, we would be in the Free Cities before they realized we were gone.” 

The idea is wholly stupid from the start, and by the time they curl beneath the sheets of her bed that night, Cersei already suspects that she mostly agreed to punish those who wronged her. The prince would weep for the loss of her, the most brilliant flower in his court, and her father would realize that only death should separate her and her twin, and certainly no mortal man. He would see that they are bound. 

It is a farce, a bit of playacting, the sort of challenge they would play at in their youth, each daring the other to go further and further. When they leave beneath the cloak of night, their horses try to outstrip one another, as though it were just another race along the beaches of the Rock. The animals, much like their masters, are somehow the perfect compliment to the other and yet always in competition with one another. 

Their path is ill-conceived, full of uncertain turns, and for that Cersei must curse herself. She has always been the cautious one, the brain to Jaime’s brawn. Her twin prefers to fling himself headfirst into whatever challenges appears on the horizon. And if that challenge should be darkness, then into the darkness he goes. They sleep beneath arcing tree branches, Jaime’s strong right arm thrown around her for security. She knows by the twinkle in his eye, in the lightness of his step, that he finds the whole thing a romantic adventure, whereas she cannot help but miserably dream of her soft feather bed and silken sheets, the cool brush of the pillow against her cheek, when she curls her aching limbs upon the cold ground. 

It is not until the third day that it becomes plain that no one is coming from them. She may never know the comfort of her home again, she realizes with a disconcerted jolt. Should they find White Harbor, they would go to the Free Cities not as the beautiful, powerful Lannister twins but as two runaway children, poor and alone in the world. Once, she had thought that she needed nothing more than Jaime, but now she thinks that golden dragons with which to make their way would have helped, too. 

They ride along the Trident, and though the waters are dark and murky, Jaime swings down to have a drink. “Don’t,” Cersei orders with sudden irritation. “You do not know what lurks beneath the surface, don’t just stick your hand in like a fool.” He scowls at her, the way he would when she would beg him _do not leap from those rocks, do not come to my rooms when they can see._ He thinks her too cautious, he thinks her afraid, and at those times, despite everything, Cersei thinks he will never quite understand what it is to be her – to be a woman. 

“I’m thirsty,” he protests. “We haven’t come to an inn since yesterday. I need a drink.” He proffers his hand, gives her a smile. “Come down; I’ll let you drink from my hands. You won’t have to reach in yourself.” 

“Jaime, don’t,” she says again, but this time it is more a plea than a demand. There is a feeling of disquiet working its way down her spine, an ill shadow passing over their heads, and the last time she felt such foreboding had been in the presence of a wood witch who spelled misfortune and destruction for her. “We will find somewhere proper to stop.” 

He relents, as he so often does to her wishes, and he does so again when they stop to again sleep outside, exposed. “Stop!” she cries out when he bends to the stream, and with a frown, he obeys. In the recesses of her mind, even Cersei thinks her fear may be unfounded, but since that witch had wrapped those dark promises around her, she sees shadows everywhere. 

Jaime’s lips are dry and cracked when he kisses her that night, beneath the swaying leaves, and Cersei knows that he will not listen to her wishes in the morn. 

\--

He slips away while she slumbers, and he comes back broken, maimed, _changed._

She cradles him in her arms and her tears splash down upon his face; she does not know if she weeps for his sake or her own, that her perfect mirror is now reduced to broken shards. The reflection is distorted, wrong, and for that, Cersei feels more alone than she has in her entire life, even as Jaime reaches up with his left hand to wipe the dampness from her face. Angrily, she turns her face away, unable to meet his eye. Suddenly, he is little more than their grotesque monstrous imp of a little brother, and she is alone in her untarnished beauty. _You careless fool, you never listen to me, and now we shall both pay the price._

They tarry long at the next inn, and Jaime tosses in fevered dreams upon the straw mattress while Cersei paces the length of the tiny room, forward and back again. She composes letter after letter to her father, one demanding and then one pleading, another sorrowful and penitent and the next indignant and furious; one by one, they go into the fire, stoking the flames higher even as the sweat drips from Jaime’s brow. 

As the moons turn and Jaime recovers his strength, the coin runs out sooner than she ever thought it would, never before having been accountable for it. Foolishly, Cersei had always thought it as a never-ending well, and she finds it is easier to sell the golden belt around her waist, the rubies on her ears and wound about her neck, and - once they are gone - to steal from passing travelers, than it is to debase herself to work. She is a noble maiden, the should-be-queen, and she will neither pour ale nor bake bread to make her way, not when there is such a thrill in cunning and trickery, a sweet satisfaction to be found from winning silvers with a smile and naught more. She promises the world and nothing at all. _Stupid men are so easily bought._

When she rests beside Jaime at night, she lies to his right so that he may wrap his left arm around her – whole, firm, and familiar. “Will you leave me?” he whispers against the cloud of her golden hair, and it is not until that moment that Cersei realizes that she _could,_ that Jaime may be broken, but she is whole and beautiful and the world could still be hers. It would be hers without her twin’s hand in her own, and just the thought feels like the worst of betrayals. 

“No,” she answers. “Never.” 

He rolls her to her back, his right arm pushed beneath the thin pillow, out of sight. He kisses her, and it is sweet and warm and right as ever, but Cersei cannot help but count the cracks in the ceiling above his head, the cobwebs that lace corner to corner. He pushes inside her, and she traces her doubts onto the broad planes of his back. 

\--

But in the end, it is Jaime’s fault that their father finds them, Jaime who could not leave well enough alone. 

As soon as he is able to stand, he disappears for hours, his left fingers wrapped around the hilt of his sword. “I cannot resist it any longer. I must be able to fight,” he tells her, as though it were a calling, the pull of the moon at the wild animal within. As to how he progresses, she never knows. It is a secret that he locks away inside himself, a world that she is not invited to partake to. And though she rakes her nails upon his skin at night to stake her claim, it leaves her bitter and cold nonetheless. 

Every night he comes to her beaten and battered, in a manner that the knight she knew before would have never been debased to. “You will only hurt yourself further,” she scolds, and with that spark of life that ever remains, Jaime grins at her and assures her that even now, no man will ever get the best of him. 

But one night he does not return unaccompanied, but led between a group of gold cloaks. Before his maiming, Cersei knows he would have outstripped them all, left them as a bloody heap to feed the forest floor; as it is, she doubts they even recognized the once proud Young Lion, scruff and grotesque as he is now. It is she who the guards recognize, and they bow their heads deeply, respectfully, and Cersei cannot help but smile at the long-missed deferment. Beside her, Jaime frowns, and the sword falls uselessly from his fingers. If he is the broken shards of the mirror, she is the sun reflecting off their edges. 

But it is their father, when he comes to where they have been, who convinces her to depart. Tywin Lannister is every inch as splendid, as foreboding as he has ever been upon his great horse, and the dissatisfaction in his gaze softens when his eyes alight upon her. For the first time in her life, Cersei’s father looks at her as though she is not only Jaime’s equal, but more than he could be, and it is intoxicating. Of all those she has wished ill, her twin has never been one, yet like a flower that has grown in shadow, desperately she reaches for the light of her father’s approval. 

“Come,” he tells her, stroking her golden hair, “it is time to make you a queen.” Her father’s smile is beautiful and terrible, satisfied and a snarl, all at once. 

“And Jaime,” she says, suddenly eight again and in desperate need of her other half – how easily her father reduces her to such. Wildly, she reaches out for her twin’s hand, but he does not take it – cannot take it. “Jaime must come, too. Jaime must always be by my side.” 

She demands that they bring him, that she will always remember. She will hold that truth to her heart when Jaime later accuses her of leaving him behind. 

\--

It is on the road that she learns of the war, of how the world has changed in her absence. She is not to be the queen of her silver prince, the one who still plays such haunting melodies in her dreams while she twirls in the arms of her golden knight, but a stag queen, draped in gold rather than red. 

Cersei tells herself it is no matter, that a crown’s color changes not its weight. Their wedding is a splendid affair, and she is bedecked in the finest jewels, clothed in purest white so that her hair shines like a sunbeam and her eyes sparkle like the rarest gems. _The most beautiful maid in the land,_ the singers will spin of her, and Jaime pants it in her ear as he pushes her skirts above her waist. But the merest brush of his deformity and she shrinks away, unwilling to be tainted on this most glorious of days. “Not this morn,” she tells him, and watches his eyes darken in grim understanding. 

The king is handsome, in a way different than both Prince Rhaegar and her Jaime – he is made less of beauty and more of rough edges, of the hardened skin of a warrior. He stands a foot taller than most in the room, and there is the merest glint of white, white teeth beneath his black beard when he is amused. There is strength to this man, and she has always loved Jaime best when exuding the power that comes from a kill. To Cersei, it is the most potent of all love potions. _Perhaps, we will be happy,_ she thinks to herself, and when she is found with child soon after their wedding – too soon, in truth, but no one would dare whisper and Cersei knows well enough to hold her tongue and pray for a late, small babe – she is all the more confident. 

_Are you happy?_ Jaime’s voice echoes in her mind, and just as before, forever with a hand on the swell of her belly, Cersei thinks _oh yes._ And just as before, soon her joy turns to ash in her mouth. 

\--

Her husband is not fond of her, and his sulkiness turns his handsome features soft and sour. “Lyanna,” he breathes in her ear when he comes to her bed to seek his pleasure. When she protests demurely, citing the safety of their babe, he pushes his cock into her open hand, and spends himself that way, making a mess everywhere all whilst sighing that same name, _my Lyanna._ His hands twist into her thick hair and pull hard, as though he could wretch the golden locks free and reveal his northern lady beneath, her tresses dark as night – a rather unfortunate looking creature, in Cersei’s memory. 

Should she tell Jaime of the injustices she suffers, he would slice the fool king from belly to nose, she fumes. But that had been the Jaime of before, her whole Jaime, her other half in his matching glory. Now he must gather the strength merely to raise his sword, and he is no longer Cersei’s strong arm. To see him lesser than he was is more painful than not seeing him at all. And so she stews in her unhappiness, wondering how to make her husband love her as he does his long-gone winter maid. 

The king is away when her babe is born, with the sweetest yellow curls adorning his head, and his face Lannister in miniature. The well-wishes on the birth of a healthy son, a needed prince, flow as heartily as the wine, and Cersei awaits the return of the king certain that this – a boy heir – will soften his heart to her. She cannot see how anyone would fail to lay eyes upon the boy and not love him instantly, in all his tiny perfection; and who then would dare to suggest that he had been born of another man’s seed? 

The birth is long and arduous, and days slip into weeks before she rises from her bed. In that time, the king comes to see her but once, half-heartedly peering into the cradle before turning away with a disinterested shrug of his shoulders. 

His indifference sets her anger ablaze; the insults to herself were hard enough to take, but to see her babe, the heir to the throne, so snubbed, is more than she can bear. It is what finally compels her to rise, to call for her handmaiden so that she may wash before going to the king. She knows not what she will say – she longs to scream and rail, but fears she may instead cry, and while she ponders her words, she calls for bucket after bucket of hot water. The servants pour it over her and it scalds, turning her skin hot and blistered, and she watches as they turn away to gasp for air, their faces red as they struggle to breathe in the smothering heat. 

It is the sweetest pain, and she rises from the waters reborn, no longer the maiden of the Rock who had dreamed of a crown nor a bride floating on air to wed a king. The heat melts away her softness, the tenderness at the corners of her heart, and leaves her lean and cold. The girl suffocates in the steam and the lioness bursts forth, ruthless and cruel with an appetite for blood. She steps from the bath and leaves her old self behind, and with lowered eyes, her maids rush forward to wrap her in soft linens. 

They do not meet her gaze, and Cersei wonders if they even see that she is not the woman she was before. 

And so she rages at the king with a sharp tongue and sharper nails, rebukes him for spurning the newborn prince. He snarls at her, far more like a dog than a stag, that he shall return to look upon the boy once more, and sends her away, demanding that she put herself from him until his anger abates. Cersei does not tell him that though his may, her own rage will never quiet. With a hunger unable to be quelled, it gnaws away at her, and with suspicious eyes, she looks about the court for another soul to feed it. 

She cloaks herself in courtesies, a lady’s woven disguise, but inside her anger forms a pit in her heart, rotting it from the inside out and leaving it black and empty. _If only Jaime were beside me, he would soothe my unhappiness,_ she tells herself, but he is caught in his own determination to undo his foul fortunes, and she still cannot bring herself to look upon him so changed. But now it is not just what he lost in their journey, but the strange purpose he has gained since, one of which she has no part. That alone puts more distance between them than could physically exist on the earth – two lost hearts are not bound by such worldly limits. Where once before she felt they were two parts of a whole, now she is certain that they are two halves adrift, doomed to be forever incomplete and alone. 

When she first spies a dark head bent over her son’s cradle, Cersei thinks perhaps the king has fulfilled his promise, and come to see his son at last. Yet the figure leaning there is far too slight to be her burly husband – a woman, not a man – and one nearly translucent in the moonlight that shines in through the open windows. 

“What are you doing?” she asks, and there is the sharpness of fear in her voice, despite the fact that her guards remain just outside the door, despite the fact that the lady silhouetted there is really more of a girl, a child, than a woman grown. “Who are you? How dare you visit the prince uninvited!” 

The girl-woman raises her face, and though she is a stranger, there is something familiar of her to Cersei. “I am looking for my son,” she says, but her lips do not move at all. The words echo through Cersei’s body like a heartbeat, so that she shudders. _It is an ill wind,_ she tells herself, but at the back of her mind the wood witch’s woods echo, of that feared queen, younger and more beautiful. “Have you seen my boy? Is he safe?” 

“That is _my_ son,” the queen replies, and her voice is shrill in her anger and her nerves. “Begone from here, before I call the guards to remove you myself!” And with the threat uttered, she flies to the door of her chamber and wretches it open, calling the Kingsguard stationed outside her door to come and dispose of the woman troubling her child. But when Ser Barristan obediently enters, his sword drawn in warning, the girl is gone and Cersei’s son sleeps on unawares. Perhaps, Cersei allows, the stranger took heed to her warning, and fled while her back was turned. Nevertheless, never one for mercy nor second chances, she orders the castle searched for the odd visitor so that she may be punished for her crime, but to no avail. Like a shadow, she has slipped through the cracks of the castle and is gone away. 

To Cersei’s horror, the stranger appears night after night, bent over the cradle, calling for her son, and when the queen crosses the room to push her away, to physically force her from Joffrey’s side, her hands fly through the woman’s torso as though she were made of nothing more than smoke. The woman’s grey eyes regard her sadly when Cersei screams, and that sorrowful gaze is the last thing Cersei sees before she faints dead away from the terrible shock of it all. 

The court whispers that she has run mad, when she demands that something be done about her ghostly visitor, and night after night a member of the Kingsguard bursts forth at her screams to find her alone. _The mad queen_ , they whisper, and leave her a wide breadth as she stalks the castle halls, her son cradled in her arms. They have no answer for the king as to the cause of her distress, and it is not long until rumors are abound that he will set her aside, now that childbirth had ruined her mind. 

( _Jaime_ , she thinks, _Jaime would see_ , and though her twin is far from her, she writes, _come to me, I need you more than I have ever needed you, I love you, I love you, I love you._ ) 

It is after a moon passes in this manner that the king finally decides to investigate for himself, and he lies with the queen behind the pulled curtains of her bed, the spot from where she hears the voice each night. They lie side-by-side, waiting in untouching, stony silence, and for the first time, Cersei rejoices to hear that damned voice call, “My son – I am looking for my son. I must know that he is safe.” 

Bewildered and yet still elated, the king pushes back the bed curtains and the name that he calls erupts from his chest like a song. “Lyanna!” he cries, and he leaps from the mattress, his arms outstretched. “Lyanna!” And that is when Cersei finally recognizes the woman-child who visits her chambers each night, as the wolf maiden that has ever haunted her husband’s dreams. She has ever been the ghost in their marriage; there is a poetic justice to having her spirit in her chambers. But even the king’s ardent desire cannot make what is dead real, and his arms pass through her as easily as Cersei’s had – embracing or grasping, it makes no difference to the shades of the past. 

No difference to the shadows that remain, but it is enough difference for the king, who declares he will have his ghost queen rather than his Lannister wife. It is enough that he may look upon the girl he desires above all others, even if he shall never again feel the warmth of her skin, even if he may never lay a crown upon her head. She is the queen of his heart and that is enough for him to call her the queen of the realm, though she will birth nothing but death to his line. In response to these riches and glories and honors, the ghostly maiden speaks not a word, but gazes at him with unrecognizing eyes, dead rose petals falling from the raven tresses of her hair. “Where is my son?” she asks mournfully, and the king can give his love no answer, for he knows not of what she speaks. 

\--

It is Jaime who is sent to take Cersei back to the Rock. She wants to cry against his chest for the wheel of fortune again turning against her, she wants to beat at his chest and curse his name for leaving her side and refusing her summons. But inside, her heart is turned to blackest ice, the seeds that took root so long ago festering and choking the life from her, and she can only turn a face of cool, glacial beauty to him. There is still that, there is always that – she is beautiful. 

“You are too late,” she tells him, her voice even. “You could have saved me, I think.” 

And Jaime, her Jaime, is still broken and grotesque, no matter how he tries to hide his malformation with golden sculptures. Yet somehow she longs for him anyway, to be his broken half, that their jagged edges may come together and heal them as one once more. “Oh, sister,” he whispers, and his tears splash upon the crown of her golden head when he pulls her close. She presses her face against the crook of his neck and breathes deep of the scent there; there, the world is perfect, there, she is whole. “I will. I promise.” 

His hands, one false and one true, close about her throat, and he squeezes.


End file.
